Domestic violence screening in hospital v1
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Patients screening positive for domestic violence in hospital: missed opportunities for intervention
IRAS ID
153954
Contact name
Charlotte Warren-Gash
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust
Research summary
Domestic violence is a serious cause of physical and psychological morbidity and has far-reaching consequences for children, families and society. Domestic violence is often associated with other problems such as substance misuse, homelessness and mental health needs. Patterns of abuse may be deeply entrenched in family life and there are multiple barriers to seeking help, which may include cultural normalisation of abuse, stigma, fear of reprisal and fear of children being taken into care. Although in the UK around 30% of women have experienced domestic violence since the age of 16, as abuse is chronically under-reported, few victims access domestic violence services. Most victims will however access healthcare (either as a result of abuse experienced or for some other reason. Opportunistic domestic violence screening at the Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust has identified high numbers of patients reporting either current or past abuse.
In this study we plan to use routinely generated data from domestic violence screening forms to investigate demographic and clinical characteristics of people screening positive for domestic violence in hospital. We will then extract aggregated data on hospital attendance patterns in the 3 years preceding a positive domestic violence screen to examine missed opportunitied for intervention. We will compare demographics and other characteristics of the hospital population referred to a domestic violence service with people referred to the service from other sectors such as education and social services. We will finally investigate staff attitudes and barriers to domestic violence screening in hospital through semi-structured interviews to inform design of future hospital-based domestic violence interventions.
REC name
West Midlands - Black Country Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
14/WM/0181
Date of REC Opinion
23 May 2014
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion